


Saying Sorry Doesn't Cost You A Life

by liseuse



Category: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 11:03:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17021463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liseuse/pseuds/liseuse
Summary: It might take a while, but Chrestomanci comes to a realisation eventually.





	Saying Sorry Doesn't Cost You A Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alltoseek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltoseek/gifts).



> For my recipient, I hope you like it!
> 
> Many thanks for beta services, at short notice and excellently rendered, go to j! Any and all remaining mistakes are mine and mine alone.

Millie dropped into the chair opposite Christopher and leaned forward so she could catch his eye. ‘You can stop pretending to gaze into nowhere,’ she said. ‘We’ve been married entirely too long for you to fool me.’

Christopher raised an eyebrow and unsteepled his fingers. ‘You seem rather perturbed’. 

‘I suppose you could say I am,’ Mille said, rather more archly than she had intended. ‘Unless you have made very nice with the vicar I just don’t see how we can step foot in the church ever again.’ The vicar might not, if Millie was being truthful, deliver the most exciting of sermons, but it was important that the family be seen at church. She prided herself on the active part played by the House and the Family in local affairs, and in being part of the community. And for Gwendolen to take her games outside the house in such a way was mortifying. Not only mortifying but potentially damaging. 

‘Oh, he’s been mollified,. Christopher smiled. ‘New roofs for vestries are rather expensive, it turns out.’ 

‘I would imagine they are,’ Millie said, and a significant portion of her brain turned to how the household budget could be temporarily tightened when the government refused to pay the sum, as it inevitably would. ‘Are you going to speak to Gwendolen?’

‘I rather think not,’ Christopher said. ‘I have to go to Series Four this afternoon. There have been reports of miscellaneous disturbances. They’ll be a nice change from Gwendolen-related disturbances.’

‘Hmph,’ Millie said as she stood. ‘And what about Eric? Have you reconsidered talking to him?’

‘I am holding out hope that he will come and tell me everything’. Christopher shrugged. ‘I admit that my hope is running somewhat thinner than I am used to.’

\--

Mr Saunders hopped after Chrestomanci, thinking that whilst his job sounded exciting and full of intrigue, it did rather come with downsides. Julia and Roger were, as students went, middling to fair. They both suffered, in his private estimation, from a mild lack of vim, but they did mostly do as they were asked and with some approximation of enthusiasm. Eric and Gwendolen, on the other hand, were rather trying his patience. Gwendolen because she was so full of self-importance, and Eric because Mr Saunders just couldn’t work out if he was, as Chrestomanci thought, impossibly powerful and hiding it, or, as he himself thought, just a very weak-willed boy.

‘I am beginning to lose patience,’ Chrestomanci said as he wiped squashed earthworm from his shoe.

‘It is all getting a bit tedious,’ Saunders agreed. ‘I do think, you know, that Cat is more in the dark than you assume.’

Chrestomanci shook his head. ‘Nonsense, he must know what Gwendolen is planning. And eventually he will realise that he needs to tell us.’

‘But,’ Michael said, ‘what if he doesn’t? I’m no expert in sibling relations, having none myself, but it seems more realistic that Eric is under Gwendolen’s thumb and not that he is deliberately hiding a plot to destabilise the Series. She is rather a force of personality, and they didn’t have the most regulated of upbringings.’

‘No,’ Chrestomanci said. ‘Mille gave me quite the ticking off about not having got in touch with them sooner.’

Michael looked at him and decided not to share his and Mrs Bessemer’s thoughts on the matter.

\--

Her arm tucked in Christopher’s, Millie walked down the path between the yew trees. ‘I am sure it was an accident, my dear, and that Cat didn’t intentionally turn Euphemia into a frog.’ She rather wished that she and Christopher weren’t spending more of their rare time alone talking about Eric and then told herself off for thinking that way. The poor child’s life had been consistently upheaved and he didn’t seem to be settling in in the Castle as she’d hoped he would.

‘I am glad you are so convinced,’ Christopher said dryly. ‘I remain less so.’ 

Millie turned to look at him, ‘Are you going to enlighten me as to what you found out during your whirlwind trip through the Related Worlds?’

‘As long as you promise not to spill the beans.’ Chrestomanci smiled at Millie’s look of outrage and squeezed her arm. ‘Currently we are not in charge of the care and feeding of Gwendolen. We are feeding and caring for Janet, whose parents are looking after Romillia, etc. etc. so on and so forth. Janet is from Twelve-B so pretending we do not know that she is not Gwendolen in the face of her ignorance of magic may be difficult.’

Millie quirked her eyebrow. ‘Challenge accepted. And are you still convinced that Cat knows more than he is letting on?’

‘He certainly knows that Janet is not Gwendolen, but has yet to say anything. And he did lock Euphemia in a wardrobe whilst she had been transformed into a frog. I know his parents were hardly the best examples of restraint and sensibility, and he has had a somewhat topsy-turvy life, but I am somewhat reaching my limit.’ Christopher pursed his lips and then exhaled heavily. 

Millie untucked her arm and turned to face him. ‘May I offer a suggestion?’

Christopher smiled, ‘Any and all suggestions gratefully welcomed.’

‘Magic lessons.’ Millie nodded at Christopher’s somewhat incredulous look. ‘I know, you’ve been deliberately not letting either of them anywhere near magic. But, if Cat is as powerful as you say, then he will need lessons. And, perhaps, if he and you are engaged in a shared pursuit, he may feel that you are less intimidating.’

‘I am not intimidating!’ Christopher exclaimed and then scowled as Millie was caught with a fit of the giggles. 

‘Oh, my dear,’ she said weakly through her laughter. ‘You scare that poor boy silly.’

‘Yes, because he has a guilty conscience!’ Christopher drew himself up to his full height and looked as if he was going to stride off. He stopped as Millie caught his elbow.

‘Christopher,’ she said flatly, ‘he is a child, and his parents have died, and he has spent his life overshadowed by Gwendolen. Gwendolen has now disappeared, and been replaced by someone who looks exactly like her, but who is not her. He may have a guilty conscience, I may be wrong, but he is also a child. Start magic lessons and give him some reason to trust you.’

\--

Chrestomanci had asked Cat to come and see him in his office after breakfast, and Cat had dragged out breakfast for as long as he could. Eventually though the breakfast table had been cleared around him and Millie had poked her head into the dining room and gently reminded Cat that Chrestomanci was waiting.

‘I need to apologise to you, Cat,’ Chrestomanci said. He had changed into his orange gown with green leaves on it, thinking it might be less intimidating than the morning suit he had been wearing earlier. 

‘Oh,’ Cat said, fiddling with his handkerchief. ‘It’s not really necessary,’ he muttered as he shuffled towards the edge of the rug. 

‘It is.’ Chrestomanci gestured to the comfy armchair. ‘Please do sit.’

He could see that Cat thought it was somewhat less of a request and more of an order and all but felt the prickle of irritation sliding up Cat’s spine. Gwendolen might no longer be telling him what to do, but there were still all the rules of the house and the schoolroom and now Chrestomanci was ordering him around. 

Chrestomanci smiled at him. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘orders and more orders.’ He hid a laugh behind a cough at the look on Cat’s face. ‘I’m not psychic, Millie’s life would be smoother if I were. You have a somewhat expressive face at times.’

Cat sat on the edge of chair and stared at the rug; Chrestomanci could see why, as he himself found the pattern - which sometimes seemed to be rosebuds and sometimes seemed to be shells - intriguing. Cat rubbed at a scuff on the toe of his shoe and squirmed silently, waiting for Chrestomanci to start talking again. 

‘I apologise, Eric,’ Chrestomanci said, sounding more cheerful than serious. He wondered if Cat, like Janet, had realised that the more jovial Chrestomanci sounded the more serious he was. 

‘Really,’ Cat said, ‘it’s okay. You apologised in the garden.’ 

‘No,’ Chrestomanci said, looking directly at Cat. ‘It isn’t. I made a decision about your personality and I failed to listen to everyone who was suggesting I might be wrong. I expected that the Castle’s magic would work upon you and that you would come to speak to me.’ He dropped his gaze and looked at the rug for a few seconds. ‘At no point did I consider that you were a child, and that you had lost your parents, and that your sister had such a forceful personality. I was foolish, especially when I too was subject to someone making use of my lives.’

Cat kept on looking at the rug. ‘I didn’t know that,’ he said. 

Chrestomanci looked startled. ‘Oh, yes,’ he laughed, ‘I forgot that I only told you that I still had two left. I did lose some through carelessness, but carelessness that wasn’t stopped or explained by the people who should have done.’ 

‘I wouldn’t have believed you,’ Cat said. Chrestomanci frowned at him, and he continued, ‘If you’d told me that I had magic or that I had more than one life.’

‘But I should have listened to the people telling me that you weren’t being deliberately deceitful,’ Chrestomanci said. ‘And remembered that sometimes small boys who are cowed by their siblings are just that. I think I was thrown off by how uncowed by each other Roger and Julia are. Other than boarding school, which is a situation all of its own, they are the only children that I know. Which is exactly why I should have listened to the people around me who have met, and know, more children.’ He stood up and held out his hand to Cat. ‘Right, shall we shake on a truce?’

Cat looked at Chrestomanci’s hand and held his own out for the handshake. ‘Truce,’ he said.


End file.
